1. Field
The inventive concept relates to the manufacturing of semiconductor devices. In particular, the inventive concept relates to the process of photolithography used to form fine patterns of semiconductor devices.
2. Description of Related Art
The scaling down of semiconductor devices to meet the demand for more compact and more highly functional electronic devices requires a decrease in the size and pitch of certain features of the semiconductor devices. Thus, the field of manufacturing semiconductor devices includes research into techniques of forming fine patterns, namely, circuit patterns, of the devices. A principal one of these techniques for forming a circuit pattern is photolithography or simply lithography. Semiconductor device lithography generally includes a process of coating a semiconductor wafer with photoresist, an exposure process of exposing the photoresist to an image of a circuit pattern, and a developing process of selectively removing (exposed or non-exposed) portions of the exposed photoresist to form a photoresist pattern. The exposure process includes projecting light onto the wafer through a lithography mask having features corresponding to the circuit pattern.
An etching process is carried out subsequent to the lithography process. The etching process includes etching a layer(s) beneath the photoresist pattern using the photoresist pattern as an etch mask.
In this way, the pattern of the lithography mask is transcribed onto the wafer.